Bottom Line: The U.S. economy has never been more energy efficient than it is today, and it just keeps getting more and more efficient every year as we find ways to produce more and more output with less and less energy. Amid all of the gloom and doom, this seems like something to celebrate. Over time, we're not becoming energy gluttons, we're actually becoming energy misers.

June 06, 2009

Hennepin County commissioner Jeff Johnson did the math on the solar panels recently installed on the county’s Public Works building in Medina. He heard that the panels were a terrific cost savings measure for the county taxpayers because they would save $15,000 per year in energy costs.

And then he asked how much it cost the county to install the solar panels.

They cost $900,000.

Doing the math, Johnson concluded:

Yes, these solar panels will begin to save the taxpayers of Hennepin County $15,000 per year in 2070. My 5th grade son, Thor, will be 71. I will be dead. And I’m willing to wager that the Hennepin County Public Works building in Medina will be long gone.

Why can't public officials do the math before these projects are implemented?

October 06, 2008

All told, 50 million people lost power for up to two
days in the biggest blackout in North American history. The event
contributed to at least 11 deaths and cost an estimated $6 billion.

A recent report by NextGen Energy Council
warns of crippling and life-threatening damage caused by projected
brownouts and blackouts as early as 2009 caused by our failure to
generate enough electricity to meet demand. In spite of the massive
projected damages, I found no mainstream media source even mentioning
the report in passing. The report's preface states:

The threat to the U.S. electricity grid — a threat that
goes to the heart of social stability, economic security and national
security — is real and imminent. Yet few national and state elected
officials seem aware of it. We hope this report will begin to change
that.

Not if nobody reads it.

The report found that "the single biggest threat to system
reliability is opposition from well-funded environmental groups that
oppose and file lawsuits against virtually every new electricity
project proposed." Oh yes, we've been seeing that here, here, here and other places with the proposed Big Stone II plant.

The report's major findings include:

The U.S. faces potentially crippling electricity
brownouts and blackouts beginning in the summer of 2009, which may cost
tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives. Unless major
investments are made immediately in both electricity generation (power
plants) and transmission (power lines), the threat of service
interruptions will increase.

U.S. baseload generation capacity reserve margins have declined
precipitously to 17 percent in 2007, from 30-40 percent in the early
1990s. A 12-15 percent capacity reserve margin is the minimum required
to ensure reliability and stability of the nation’s electricity system.

Compounding this capacity deficiency, the projected U.S. demand in
the next ten years is forecast to grow by 18 percent, far exceeding the
projected eight percent growth in baseload generation capacity between
now and 2016.

In total, the U.S. will require about 120 gigawatts (GW) of new generation just to maintain a 15 percent reserve margin.

Using data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation
(NERC), we estimate that the U.S. will require more than 14,500 miles
of new electricity transmission lines by 2016 regions represented by
the Florida Reliability Coordination Council (FRCC) and the Northeast
Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) may require less than 400 miles of
new transmission lines, while the Southeast Reliability Council (SERC)
may require nearly 2,300 miles. The Western Electricity Coordinating
Council (WECC) may require nearly 7,000 miles.

Investments in new generation and transmission required by 2016 will
be a minimum of $300 billion dollars. This may be a conservative
estimate, and actual costs could be much higher.

With growing nationwide reliance on natural gas for new baseload
electricity generation, disruptions in the supply or delivery of
natural gas could have a significant impact on the reliability and cost
of electricity in a number of regions.

While renewable energy proponents, and some elected officials, are
saying that the U.S. needs to only add renewable power facilities such
as wind farms, the annual capacity factor of wind generators is
typically about 25 - 35 percent. However, the probability that wind
generators are available at their rated value during annual peak
periods is only between 5 - 20 percent and varies greatly from year to
year and region to region. Wind cannot be considered a reliable
baseload capacity resource.

In the West, activist groups are pressuring government regulators to
limit access to the region’s high voltage transmission grid to large
baseload technologies such as coal. They propose favoring non-baseload,
intermittent power facilities such as wind and solar, which will
decrease the stability and reliability of the entire Western grid.

The major impediments to strengthening the nation’s electricity infrastructure and maintaining grid reliability are:

3. Challenges associated with integrating more intermittent power sources on the transmission grid;

4. Reluctance by state regulators to approve rate increases related
to the imposition of new environmental or climate-related regulation;
and

5. The relatively shorter-term approach to resource planning and
acquisition that industry has been forced to adopt because of all of
the above factors.

Of these impediments, the single biggest threat to system
reliability is opposition from well-funded environmental groups that
oppose and file lawsuits against virtually every new electricity
project proposed.

September 23, 2008

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on
drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next
week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the and Republicans
set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told
reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be
dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government
running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after
gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor
of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore
drilling in July.

"If true, this capitulation by Democrats following months of
Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with
record gasoline prices," said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio.

It's a start. Now we need legislation to stop environmental groups from bringing lawsuits to prevent us from acting on this.

September 18, 2008

Every once in a while I'm in my car around lunchtime, and when I am,
I listen to Rush Limbaugh. That happened today and I heard Rush say
something very simple, very true, and very much ignored by most of what
we hear from all sides in the media: congress makes the (federal) laws.

(Which reminds me that I read recently that some poll found that most Americans think that the republicans control Congress.)

But we have all of this campaign rhetoric trumpeting how this or
that presidential candidate will change the laws to make them fairer,
or better. And in the meantime, I don't hear anybody talking about the
power of congress. And precious little about how Congress has created
the system that allowed the economic crisis we find ourselves in to
happen in the first place.

If Washington really wanted to help Detroit, they could
end the regulatory nightmare that prevents profitable, fuel-efficient
cars from reaching market. For example, Ford is going to sell a car
that gets 65 miles per gallon starting in November. But this car will
only be available in Europe. Why? Because the car runs on diesel and
environmentalists here in the United States have fought to keep diesel
taxes high and refinery capacity low. As a result, the car would just
not be profitable here in America. A national energy policy that
afforded Detroit more engineering options to make more fuel-efficient
cars wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a cent and would undoubtedly create
more jobs and reduce our oil consumption.

The campaign's website doesn't mince any words in explaining how it decided whose pictures belong on these playing cards:

A group of politicians in Washington, D.C. are working to raise energy prices even higher. Why? Because they want to force Americans to use less and live poorer lives. But higher energy prices hit low-income families the hardest. That makes these politicians the leaders of an immoral "War on the Poor."

Who are these people? Our Alliance recently did an analysis of who votes against the interests of low-income families on energy issues in the Congress. Those who voted most often against the poor have been named "Punishers of the Poor."

The Congress for Racial Equality is part of the Stop the War on the Poor effort.
Roy Innis, its Nat'l Chairman, criticizes the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation for failing to provide leadership in energy policy, and betraying the gains achieved in the struggle for civil rights:

These are critical issues. African America cries out for thoughtful leadership. Our country hungers to embrace a strong black candidate for national public office. Instead, our Black Caucus mouths platitudes and marches in lockstep with activists and legislators whose policies are disastrous for low income and minority families.

Energy is the “master resource,” on which everything else depends. Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, natural gas and transportation fuels make our jobs, health and living standards possible. They are the great equalizer, the creator of economic opportunities and true environmental justice. Lock those resources up, or cripple our energy sector with taxes, over-regulation, and ill-advised laws that make heating, driving and manufacturing more costly – and the poor suffer most. Destroy jobs, or make poor families pay an ever larger portion of their meager incomes for energy, food and clothing – and the hard-won victories in our struggle for civil rights will quickly be reversed. Keep businesses out of neighborhoods blighted by slum dwellings and brownfields, and you take away jobs, health insurance, a stronger tax base for better schools, environmental cleanups and a chance for the American dream. Lock up oil, gas and coal prospects, and there will be fewer job opportunities even in companies committed to diversity.

June 12, 2008

Today's article by Terence Jeffrey
at CNSNews.com illuminates the connection between the automobile and
freedom, and the threat to freedom embodied in the green command that
we switch from private automobiles to public transit:

No device is more in keeping with the American spirit
than the automobile. Privately owned cars and trucks allow us to go
where we want, when want. They are freedom machines.

Still, some liberals would like to use government to force Americans out of their cars.

They believe in socialized transportation, not free-market transportation.

In a free-market transportation system, a person purchases his own
vehicle with his own money, buys his own gas with his own money and can
drive his vehicle anywhere there is a road -- and, if he has the right
kind of vehicle, some places where there are no roads.

Admittedly, the roads generally are constructed by government,
albeit with funds extracted from the earnings and gasoline purchases of
drivers.

In a socialist transportation system, the government takes the
taxpayers' money and purchases vehicles -- often buses or trains -- for
itself or a government-funded agency. Where and when these vehicles go
is determined by the government.

In a free-market transportation system, a person travels solely in
the company of people with whom he has freely chosen to travel. In a
socialist transportation system, a person may be compelled to travel in
the company of people he does not know and who could even be a danger
to him.

I know a number of small business owners whose business depends on
being able to get from point A to point B, hauling heavy equipment,
materials and supplies, and neither point A nor point B are on transit
lines. Even if they were, how do you haul a skidloader or a small
tractor on the bus? How many seats would you take up with your bags of
cement, landscaping timbers, and how do you transport a load of mulch
on light rail? And what about the truckers who haul the food and
supplies to our grocery stores, home improvement stores, and all of the
great variety of retail outlets that serve our needs on a daily basis?

Small business drives our economy, according to the SBA,
because it provides jobs for over half of the nation's private
workforce. Is it possible that the all-knowing elitists who want to
dictate how we live our lives have overlooked these questions? Would
they like to dictate what jobs these entrepreneurs and their
employees should take so that they would not need their own private vehicles?

Would they like to replace the astounding creativity that
entrepreneurs have used to increase the standard of living of us all
with the subservience of drones that simply do what they are ordered to
do?

Jeffrey puts it succinctly:

Artificially suppressing the oil supply is the most
significant method government is using today to move people from a free
market transportation system into a socialized transportation system.

And of course it's not the government alone that's doing this. I read today at foxnews.com that environmental groups recently succeeded in blocking yet another refinery expansion:

Four-plus-dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to
realize that we need increased domestic oil production to meet our
ever-growing demand for affordable fuel. But even if the greens lose
the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they nevertheless are way ahead of the
game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of
that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch.

The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC,
successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to
block ConocoPhillips’ expansion of its Roxana, Ill., gasoline refinery,
which processes heavy crude oil from Canada, the Wall Street Journal
reported on Monday.

The project would have expanded the volume of Canadian crude
processed from 60,000 barrels per day to more than 500,000 barrels a
day by 2015. After the Illinois EPA had approved the expansion, the
green groups petitioned the federal EPA to block it, alleging
ConocoPhillips wasn’t using the best available technology for reducing
emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Apparently, the plant’s planned 95 percent reduction in sulfur
dioxide emissions and 25 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides wasn’t
green enough. NRDC’s opposition is quite ironic since ConocoPhillips
and the activist group actually are teammates in the global warming
game. Both belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition
of eco-activist groups and large companies that is lobbying for global
warming regulation.

Is any refinery going to be "green enough" to satisfy the Sierra Club?